


In the Rain

by quandong_crumble



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Adorable Alistair, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, POV Alistair, Surana (Dragon Age) has Issues, fuck the Circle, fuck the chantry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 20:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quandong_crumble/pseuds/quandong_crumble
Summary: “I’ve never been in rain before,” Alim says.A little bit of a character study of my painfully young, naive Warden, through Alistair's eyes at the beginning of the blight.





	In the Rain

The clouds start gathering on the horizon just before the sun reaches its zenith. Alistair eyes them nervously. He nearly says something a couple of times but he’s not the best at reading the weather, and he doesn’t want to look stupid in front of Morrigan. Or Leliana, to be honest, though she probably wouldn’t be so cruel about it. He’s not so fussed about looking stupid in front of the silent Qunari that Alim insisted join them. He’s pretty sure Sten has decided they’re all idiots.  

They stop maybe an hour later for lunch. Alistair divides up the supplies that travel worst or spoil quickest. Morrigan sets herself down further away and digs into her own pack. Alim follows, and Alistair sees him offer the stand-offish apostate a peach. 

“I heard what the soldiers said.”

Alistair tries to hide his flinch. He hadn’t heard Leliana sneak up on him.

“About the Wardens,” she elaborates. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry.”

“Peach?” Alistair offers. He still doesn’t think he can talk about the Wardens, about Duncan, without losing what little composure he’s managed to keep so far. 

Leliana smiles. “Thank you.”

She takes the hint and sits next to him in silence for a moment, eating the peach with far less slurping than Alistair manages. Despite the whole crazy ‘the maker sent me a vision,’ stuff, Leliana seems nice. At least she’s not outwardly hostile like Morrigan, or angry and scowly like Sten. 

Their companionable silence is broken by Alim’s return, the other warden plopping down onto the log beside Alistair in a graceless sprawl. “Morrigan says it’s going to rain before dark, Alistair. Won’t that be grand?”

The little mage’s enthusiasm is contagious, at least. “Fantastic,” Alistair drawls, tucking the peach seed he’s still sucking on into his cheek. He can’t help but smile. “We can be damp and muddy instead of unseasonably warm and insect-bitten.”

“I’ve never been in rain before,” Alim says.

Alistair nearly swallows his peach seed. He thinks for a moment that Alim is teasing him, but remembers Alim ducking behind him in the camp at Ostagar, pointing at the mabari and asking Alistair if they were bears. This is going to be very amusing.

\---

Alistair was right, it is amusing. They’d walked through most of the afternoon, until the oppressive clouds were blanketing the sky rather than crouching on the horizon. They’d stopped in a nice little clearing, sheltered by a rocky outcropping on the windward side, and got the tents up and a fire going before the first fat drops fell. There hadn’t been time to cook, though, so dinner would be more fruit, and some of the soft bread and hard cheese they’d bought in Lothering. The bread wouldn’t keep much more than a few days anyway, especially if it was damp.

Alistair divvied up the food quickly, before the rain got heavy enough to really wet him. Leliana and Alim both thanked him with impeccable manners, Morrigan ignored him, which was marginally better than a snide comment as far as Alistair was concerned, and Sten grunted at him. Alistair wasn’t sure if it was a grunt of thanks or dismissal. He told himself he didn’t care anyway. Let them be rude. They could be rude together as much as they liked—Morrigan with her tent pitched as far away from them as the clearing allowed, and Sten with his groundsheet and bedroll under one of the dense pine trees—they might fall in love of mutual rudeness with each other and have ugly rude babies. Ugh. What a thought.

The rain was only just starting properly when Alistair made it back to his tent. He left the flap open so he could watch it fall into the fire, hissing and steaming, while he ate. He could see Leliana doing the same in her tent. On the other side of her tent is Alim’s, closed up tight. Huh. Guess Alim’s more nervous about the storm than he let on. 

“Whoa!”

Leliana giggles like a girl. Alistair follows her gaze, craning his neck around the tent flap and getting wet for his trouble. It’s Alim. He’s staring up at the sky with wide eyes, his arms outstretched as if to catch as much of the rain in his hands as possible. The rain starts to come down heavier and Alistair catches one last glimpse of Alim closing his eyes and starting to spin in a slow circle, a blissful smile on his face, before his pulls his head back into his tent and dries his face and hair with the front of his shirt. 

“You’ll have wet robes tomorrow,” Leliana says. 

Alim practically dances back into Alistair’s view. His hair is plastered to his head and he wipes rain out of his eyes. “Worth it,” he tells the rogue. “Besides, I have a spare. I didn’t think the rain would be so cold, though.”

“Rain usually is,” Alistair says. 

Alim laughs giddily. “And now I’ll remember that.”

He flops onto one of the logs Leliana had placed near the fire, and braces himself with his hands, his face turned up to the clouds. He’s still sitting there when the wind changes direction and Alistair has to close the flaps on his tent or risk sleeping in a wet bedroll. 

\---

It’s threatening rain again the day they take the boat across Lake Calenhad to the Circle Tower. Alistair keeps half an eye on their escort as they trudge up from the dock to the doors, but most of his attention is on his new friend, his leader, his fellow warden. 

Alim looks grim and pale, no hint of his usual easy laugh and quick smile. Alistair watches him clench trembling hands into fists and set his jaw into a stubborn line. 

“I promised myself I’d never come back here,” Alim mutters under his breath, low enough that Alistair thinks he’s the only one who hears. 

The first few rain drops start to fall and Alistair looks up reflexively, but not at the clouds. Instead he looks up at the tower and – somehow, after everything Alim’s said and done, everything he now knows – it hits him in the pit of his stomach that  _ there are no windows. _


End file.
